Synopses & Reviews
This volume is a selection of significant and previously unpublished essays and short stories by the influential critic of German and American literature and popular culture, James A. Snead. The volume contains innovative essays and notes about African American popular culture, literary criticism and five pieces of short fiction. Published posthumously, the volume attests to Snead's unique intellectual commitment to a critical engagement with the interconnections between European and African American cultural formations.
About the Author
James A. Snead was Associate Professor of English and German Literature at the University of Pittsburgh.
Kara Keeling is a Postdoctoral Fellow, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Colin MacCabe is a Distinguished Service Professor of English and Film at the University of Pittsburgh.
Cornel West is University Professor of Religion, Princeton University.
Table of Contents
Preface by Colin MacCabe
Acknowledgements
Permissions
Editor's Note
Introduction
PART I: ESSAYS
On Repetition in Black Culture
Litotes and Chiasmus: Cloaking Tropes in Absalom Absalom!
Misreading Race in Benito Cereno: The Silence of Babo
The Vision of Desire in Death in Venice
The Black Image in American Film
MTV and Its Audiences: Global Utopias?
On Basketball
European Pedigrees/ African Contagions: Nationality, Narrative and Communality in Tutuola, Achebe and Reed
Racist Traces in Postmodernist Theory and Literature
PART II: FICTION
Colossus
The White Cafe
Fundamentals
Egyptian Trains Always Come
The Disappearance of Queen Nofret
Index